


hues that i've lost

by ivory_gloss



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Colors, Egoist - Freeform, F/F, Holding Hands, How Do I Tag, I Tried, My First Work in This Fandom, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Promises, Sad, Tags Are Hard, Things Are Hard, Trust, but not out to hurt you, but they work through them together, heehye, heehye like holding hands, heejin teaching hyejoo how to live, hyejoo is awkward, hyejoo is bad at feeling, hyejoo wants heejin to stay, inspired by the egoist mv, loona is just amazing, maybe just a little actually, more ships and characters will be introduced later, the tags are all over the place, trust is more important than love, vivid - Freeform, what i'm trying to say is the second chapter is sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:15:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28971948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivory_gloss/pseuds/ivory_gloss
Summary: In a world where meeting your soulmate brought colours to your world, Hyejoo thought she would always see in black and white.How could she not? People refused to see the good in Hyejoo, if there was any left to see.But then Heejin came into her life, flinging color where it didn’t belong, and now she can’t erase the soft pinks or the bright blues. Heejin told Hyejoo that a soulmate wasn’t found, it was created.  A soulmate wasn’t love, it was trust.How far have Hyejoo's mistakes gone? How far will the new ones go?Far enough to break that trust?
Relationships: Jeon Heejin & Son Hyejoo | Olivia Hye, Jeon Heejin/Son Hyejoo | Olivia Hye
Comments: 5
Kudos: 40





	1. promise you'll stay

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Thanks for reading this.
> 
> My first fic for Loona! There's not enough HeeHye content, so I wrote this.
> 
> Hope it's not too bad!

“I didn’t mean it!” 

The wind steals her words from her as soon as they pass her lips, throwing them out into the world where they don’t belong, where nobody cares for them. It rips her from her future, because the one time where she knows what to say nobody can hear her. 

“I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean… didn’t mean-”

The girl who stands on the other side of the roof begins to walk away, each step making it harder and harder to force the words past her lips. Each thud of her shoes rings in her ears, blocking anything that tries to sound from her mouth. 

But she still continues to try. 

“Heejin! Jeon Heejin, I’m  _ sorry!” _

__

Heejin turns around.

And Hyejoo’s entire world stills.

“Why?”

The quiet word floats between them, echoing inside Hyejoo’s head.  _ Why?  _

She doesn’t know why, she doesn’t know anything, but she’s trying so  _ desperately _ hard to explain things she can’t even explain to herself. She just doesn’t  _ know,  _ and no matter how hard she tries that doesn’t change. It wasn’t like this before.

But how can she tell that to Heejin?

“I- I just- I’m sorry,” Hyejoo stammers through another apology, hoping it’ll be enough for Heejin to stay. To find out why, even if she doesn’t have an answer. To hear  _ when  _ it all started maybe, it doesn’t matter.

It wasn’t like this before. 

Before, the world was easy. Life wasn’t hard. Hyejoo saw things in only black and white, and it was  _ easy _ . 

But then Heejin came into her life, flinging color where it didn’t belong, and now she can’t erase the soft pinks or the bright blues. She can’t unsee the purples and the yellows and the oranges. She taught Hyejoo what it was like to wake up and see red and green and thousands of other colours where there used to be only gray.

She taught Hyejoo what it was like to smile and cry and laugh. She taught Hyejoo where to look when things seemed like too much. Jeon Heejin taught Son Hyejoo what it was like to breathe and live, and Hyejoo could never forget that. 

“I know you’re sorry, Olivia,” Heejin’s gentle, too gentle. “I just want to know why.”

“I don’t  _ know!”  _ The words tear themselves from her lips, exploding out into the air. If she could reach out and grab the words, cramming them back into her throat where they can’t hurt anybody other than her, she would. 

Because they're true, so, so true and she wishes they weren’t. She wishes she knew why any of this happened, she wishes why she couldn’t look at the color and add her own to it.

She doesn’t know, and that hurt more than she could describe.

Heejin turned around once again, and no, Hyejoo’s not going to let that happen. 

“No! No, don’t leave- you promised! You  _ promised  _ me you would never leave, all of you did!” She’s almost screaming as if Heejin will miss what she says if it’s too quiet, voice raw and eyes watering. She doesn’t want to cry,  _ can’t  _ cry, but she is anyways. Maybe if she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, she can reimagine herself into a world where she did what she was supposed to do. Where the tears dried up and the shuddering breaths stopped, better yet, a world where she wouldn’t have to suppress the sobs threatening to strangle her in the first place, because she wouldn’t have screwed up this way.

When Heejin stops again, Hyejoo balls up any chance of that and throws it away. 

She takes the opportunity to continue spewing words out in an attempt to make Heejin stay, because she doesn’t know how she’s going to be okay if she leaves.

“You promised! Don’t… don’t make me see the world in black and white anymore, Heejin. Don’t make me go back, don’t tell me this was all pretend!”

It’s not enough, she knows better than anyone that it’s not enough. 

(Heejin always was okay with not enough if it meant Hyejoo was happy.)

“Things change, Hyejoo.” 

Nothing to gain, everything to lose if she doesn’t respond right. What are the right things to say in the first place? She doesn’t know, or maybe she does and she just can’t-

“But we don’t have to! Not if you don’t want it to, not if we don’t want it. We make our own future, we choose what we do. This doesn’t have to change if we don’t want-” She stops, faltering. What if Heejin  _ does  _ want to?

It’s been a very real possibility this entire time, one she’s ignored because the answer might crush her if Heejin leaving doesn’t. Now that it’s looking her in the face, now that there’s the chance that Heejin will turn around and tell her exactly what she doesn’t want to hear, Hyejoo’s forced to reconsider the things she considered impossible. 

Hyejoo’s never liked having to admit something she doesn’t like will take part of her life. There’s only one response to that, and it’s to make things go her way. 

“And- and if you leave, I will too.” She’s selfish, always will be when it comes to things like these. “I know, I know it won’t matter to you as much, b-but…” 

There’s no way to make Heejin stay by her side, even when she tries it goes wrong. She has nothing Heejin wants or needs, no leverage against her. She ignores the small part of her saying she doesn’t have to, that they don’t work that way. 

It’s just not fair.

In a world where meeting your soulmate brought colours to your world, Hyejoo thought she would always see in black and white. 

How could she not? People refused to see the good in Hyejoo, if there was any left to see. Hyejoo was alone, she had no soulmate. To believe otherwise would be to blindly hope, and Hyejoo refused to do that.

Until Heejin told Hyejoo that a soulmate wasn’t found, it was created. Maybe soulmate didn’t mean love at first sight, it meant working with each other, being willing to put in that work. Soulmate could have meant friend just as easily as it meant boyfriend or girlfriend. A soulmate wasn’t love, it was trust. 

Heejin, always Heejin, was the one to put in that work with her, guiding Hyejoo when she made mistakes, having her guide Heejin when she made mistakes of her own. Hyejoo had never known what it was like to have kindness and support be the pillars of the relationship, and had never known why or how it made her so happy. 

And it’s not  _ fair.  _

Even if Hyejoo leaves, Heejin has Hyunjin, and Sooyoung, Jiwoo and Haseul and Vivi. Heejin gets to have Jungeun, Jinsoul, Yerim, and Chaewon and Yeojin coloring her world for her. They all came with Heejin.

Will they all leave with her too?

_ They won’t _ , she thinks. They’re her people as much as they’re Heejin’s. 

It won’t be the same as having Heejin. Not complete, not  _ them.  _

The tears drip down Hyejoo’s face, leaving marks she’ll never be able to erase. But it’s okay, because nobody except her can see the cracks. 

She’s always managed to fix the broken pieces by herself. Even if she’d gotten used to having Heejin there to help her, Hyejoo’s sure she’ll be able to go back to doing things alone.

That thought is even more heartbreaking than she thought it would be. She traps the scream she wants to let out in her throat, feeling it thrash around trying to go free to haunt the world. She swallows it down, imagining that the air around her is a bright purple. Hyejoo breathes it in, breathing out a dark, sticky black. Breath in good, breath out bad. 

Heejin had taught that to her. 

She feels the tears begin again, so she stares at the blurry pavement on the rooftop and focuses on the gray to try and lose herself in it.

She’ll only be able to see gray from now on. 

The thought is frightening. 

It scares her enough to jerk her head up to look at all the colors while she can, but she can’t because instead Heejin’s in front of her-

Heejin is in front of her. 

If the world was still before, it completely stops now. The only things that are moving, the things that matter, are Heejin and Hyejoo. 

“We don’t have to change.” The words are quiet, only for Hyejoo. 

“Not if we don’t want to.” Hers are only for Heejin. 

“I promised.”

“You promised.”

The silence consumes Hyejoo alive.

“Okay.” Heejin leans forward until their foreheads are pressed together, two girls joined together on the rooftop. Hyejoo can feel herself push back together, the cracks disappearing as Heejin breathes the air, the soft pink air in with her. 

“Okay?”

“I’ll stay. But only if-”

Panic flares up in Hyejoo, she can’t be this cruel. The world can’t dangle Heejin in front of her, only to rip her away because Hyejoo can’t do what she’s asking of her. 

“-only if you promise to help yourself. We work towards things, remember? We fix things, even if they take time. I kept my promise, you keep yours.” 

But Hyejoo doesn’t know if she can keep that promise. 

Hyejoo wanted colors, and Heejin gave her colors. She gave her all the things she wanted and more. 

It’s time for Hyejoo to pay that back. 

So when she opens her eyes to look into Heejin and nods, she knows she’s promising to try her best, never giving up. Heejin knows it too. 

She almost laughed when she pulled away from Heejin to wipe at her eyes, at what she was seeing. It was almost too funny not to, because it had to be a lie, right?

Except it wasn’t.

And it was entirely too terrifying to be funny. 

When Hyejoo looked up, the sky was gray. 

Dull, flat, dark, unforgivingly gray. 


	2. lost and found through the glass wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The colours had been ripped from Hyejoo's world. She doesn't know how to get them back. 
> 
> That doesn't mean she can't recover other things, right? She'll be able to find her friends. 
> 
> So when Hyejoo finds herself face-to-face with ten, stonily silent faces, it’s an understatement to say she doesn’t know what to do. 
> 
> This calls for a speech, she thinks. Something long and heartfelt about her actions and regrets, new beginnings and forgiveness. The more people that cried, the better. 
> 
> “...hi?”
> 
> Speeches were never her strong suit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this!
> 
> I'm sorry for not posting in so long! To the limited people that read this, please forgive me ㅜㅜ
> 
> Anyways, let's get on to a new chapter. Hope you enjoy!

“Heekie, I can’t see the colours anymore.”

She sounds young, childlike.  _ Scared. _

Hyejoo can’t even blame herself. 

As soon as she had made it across one river, she had to climb a mountain, and afterwards there was sure to be a vast forest waiting for her to struggle going through at the bottom. 

Was this just the way her life worked? Every good thing paid back with a bad thing, meant to keep her equilibrium, the knife’s edge of unlucky and lucky.  _ Average,  _ maybe.

Most average people didn’t have to fight for every single thing. 

Heejin grasps her hands, bringing them to hold between the two. The wind envelopes both of them, and Hyejoo is strangely grateful that it is colorless. She can only feel it, never see it. 

“What do you mean?” Hyejoo knows Heejin means more than just those words, so she answers in kind.

“Everything’s gray, like it used to be. I can’t see any colours. You’re gray too.” 

Heejin nods, her lips pursing slightly as she thinks through the responses.

“Can you remember what the colours look like?” 

Hyejoo closes her eyes, imagining the skirt Heejin’s wearing. Pale pink, fluttering around her legs, a white shirt tucked into it at the waistband. She can picture it, but as soon as her eyes open the shades fly away, replaced. What her mind shows her and what her eyes tell her are opposite, and Hyejoo isn’t able to combine both of these things at the same time, into the same scene.

She tries again, carving the image into her mind, imprinting it on the eyelids until she no longer sees inky black when she closes her eyes, but the skirt, icy pink, the closest shade to white. 

The illusion reverts back to gray when she opens her eyes. If Hyejoo tries hard enough, if she stops being so  _ difficult,  _ she’s sure that she’ll be able to paint the colours back in the world. She can imagine them, and it’s only a matter of transferring them from plane to another. 

But she can’t, she  _ can’t.  _

She’d been trying to be logical, to work through it with Heejin, but the solid ground of reasoning crumbles under the small explosions of panic bursting through her, breaking from underneath her so she plummets into the confusing dark of emotions, never sure of what is right and wrong. 

Holding Heejin’s hand, she attempts to anchor herself into calm. But how can she be calm? How can she be calm when she’s lost one of the most important things for herself?

Dark, sooty black, leaving her mouth in small puffs. A poignant, striking orange, almost obnoxiously bright, surrounding her for her to breathe in to make her vibrant-

The scream leaves her lips before she can even feel the urge to, explosive, launching itself past her lips. Rage, misery, anguish, sadness, frustration. She doesn’t know what the scream means, and she can’t afford to lose herself in it to find out. 

She stops in the next instant, too abrupt to be natural. 

Hyejoo can’t  _ breathe.  _

Heejin lets go of her hand, pulling Hyejoo in to wrap her arms around her. 

“Scream if you want to, Hye. There’s no one stopping you.”

No sign of any _don’ts,_ to not cry, or false reassurances that it would be okay. Validating Hyejoo’s emotions, letting her express them if she felt she had to, even wanted to. Not making her move on until she could.

It’s familiar, and the sameness of the gesture is what unsticks Hyejoo’s breath in her throat, her chest rising and falling once again. 

“I just- I don’t like it. I want to see the colours again.” 

“I know,” Heejin strokes her back. “How about we go inside, and we find Haseul unnie and Vivi unnie? They’re adults, they’ll know what to do.”

Hyejoo inhales, then surprises herself by smiling a small, soft, secret smile, meant for her and her alone. It melts away the ice, extinguishes the flames, and leaves her feeling something else. 

The tiny, flowery beginnings of another emotion she can’t quite distinguish, can’t pin down. 

_ Hope,  _ she decides on. Hope. 

Hyejoo likes the way it makes her feel. 

She supposes she should be nervous as she goes with Heejin to where the rest of them are.

She isn’t. 

(Maybe she was, but nobody would have known that.)

So when Hyejoo finds herself face-to-face with ten, stonily silent faces, it’s an understatement to say she doesn’t know what to do. 

They’re on the second floor of an abandoned building,  _ their  _ building, the one they’d stumbled upon in almost foolish luck. Maybe it was unethical to have taken it over… but who was going to stop them?

It was almost cliche how they lived, but Hyejoo preferred cliche to the streets. The second floor was always their choice, because it was the warmest floor. She knows what’s behind each door just as she knows what’s behind the faces she’s looking at now. 

This calls for a speech, she thinks. Something long and heartfelt about her actions and regrets, new beginnings and forgiveness. The more people that cried, the better. 

“...hi?”

Speeches were never her strong suit. 

She now understands how people can talk about silence as tangible. It’s so…  _ heavy  _ she can almost taste it in the air. Hyejoo wishes one of them would just yell at her already so she can yell back and then everything can go back to normal. 

Heejin moves their intertwined hands slightly, bringing Hyejoo to look back towards her friends. She wonders if any of them can see the tear stains on her face, what they think she was crying about. 

“Olivia, you absolute disaster.” It’s Sooyoung, ever the impatient one, not being able to stand silence.

And it’s entirely too inappropriate, but Hyejoo starts laughing. It’s just- how can she explain it? Disaster doesn’t begin to cover her, not really, not anymore. After everything she’s done, she can hardly begin to be classified as a disaster. 

It’s just so fucking  _ funny. _

Usually people are supposed to join in the laughter, breaking the tension. At least in the books she’s read, that’s how it goes. When she stops however, laughter petering out into quieter exhales, everyone’s remains sculpted in the absence of noise. 

“Sorry…?”

This wasn’t supposed to be worrying, not compared to what she’d just been through. The small blooms of hope inside of her begin to wilt, rapidly fading, leaving as soon as they had come. It leaves her feeling empty. She calls back the feeling, trying to wrap it around her heart. To soften the blow, or to protect its warmth she doesn’t know, awaiting the sentence about to fall on her head. 

“Are you hungry?”

Hyejoo doesn’t bother to note who asked her. She allows herself a few seconds to let the relief gust into her heart, to revive the fragile blossoms she had written off as dead. 

Her apology has been accepted. 

  
  
  


It’s been accepted.

That doesn’t mean  _ she _ has been. 

She would be, possibly, if she had the courage to ask them to. If she could move over to where they’ve all tangled into a mass of bodies. Everything might go somewhere close to normal.

But there’s a glass wall between her and them. She can’t break it, can’t even touch for fear that somehow she’ll leave dirty fingerprints over it, that she will leach into them. Who’s going to clean up smears of black she’s leaving everywhere? It’s pristine and perfect without her there. If she covers the wall with enough stains, she won’t even be able to look at the image.

There’s something  _ wrong  _ with her. She’s a coward, can’t even stand up and sit down where she used to belong. 

An irrational flash of annoyance flickers through her. Why don’t  _ they  _ move over to where she is? 

_ They don’t want to touch her, not when the grey can seep into their colour.  _

They don’t even know she can’t see the colours. She’s sure at least Haseul can see she’s isolated, she’s good at noticing the details. 

_ They can feel it, feel the bad coming off of her in waves.  _

She can’t cross the wall, no matter how thin it is. She just stays where she is and watches. 

Hyejoo can’t help but notice the way Heejin’s holding the hand she had touched, as if it had contact with something she wanted to avoid. 

Maybe she’s overreacting, and Heejin’s just acting normally.

But maybe she’s not. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You've arrived at the end of the chapter!
> 
> Did you like this? Let me know what you think!
> 
> Comments make me smile, so leave one below!
> 
> Have an amazing day/night!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hoping to post a chapter every week, but my life has a habit of poking its head out of its dark corner whenever I don't want to see it... /sigh/
> 
> Comments highlight my day, so please leave them!
> 
> To conclude this, Egoist and ViViD are amazing.


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